Legends; Myths; Tests – and Laughter

Let us not forget that the Sinister Path involves a lot of fun – a lot of laughter and pleasure – as well as a certain dark, and sometimes even grim, striving. There is and should be ecstasy; exultation – as there must be, beyond the stage of novice, the ability, as I have wriiten elsewhere, to not take one’s self too seriously: to have fun at one’s own expense.

It is one of the many signs of the failures – of those who pose at being Satanists – that they take themselves too seriously, and can become obsessed, with themselves, with others, with “things”. Our way means self-understanding and self-honesty – we have to know, and admit, when we are wrong and so – knowing and admitting – we can move on, learning from our errors of experience.

Those along our Way should always test themselves – as those, being guided, will sometimes be tested. Always, there should be questions, a striving to understand, to know, to not be satisfied with what is given, or read, or shown, or told. What is important is the practical experience, the following of the Way, the learning that results – nearly everything is a form, a presencing, and thus only a beginning, a move toward that genuine understanding which is beyond all causal forms.

Thus, legends, myths, traditions – even those of the ONA! – may be interesting and they may (or may not) possess some aspect or aspects of a certain causal truth, often limited to a certain causal time. Mostly, such things are tools, a means – to create what is beyond them, which is of the essence from which such “things” derive. All these things should therefore be related to this, their context. But it is up to each and every novice, and Initiate, to study such things – to analyze them, and to form their own conclusions about such things. Their conclusions may be wrong – but so what?

There is a real truth in the seeming riddle that the ONA is, and is not, a tradition. Like a numinous musical creation, there are many layers, just as many and diverse “meanings” can be projected onto the ONA. But in the end even the ONA, public or esoteric – what is found or given or discovered by each new Initiate and Adept – is but one means to take us from this lowly causal existence to the realms where true magick and real living begin….. And what fun can we have on the way!

“One of the least-known but important signs of a genuine Adept of our Dark Tradition, our sinister way, is the ability to not take one’s self too seriously – to laugh, at one’s self, and especially at others: those who fall for the japes, the games, the riddles, the tests, that we as Adepts set for neophytes, for the poseurs, for the supine masses. For we revel in such things, in such games, which we create and play for our own amusement, and that of others like us, just as we love to be changelings and cause confusion, misunderstanding, doubt, uncertainty – and, occasionally, the light of insight, dawning as it can and does upon one person possessed of our own evolutionary and magickal abilities, perchance propelling that person towards us and our ways…” (The Laughter of the Adept)